Veduta del Ponte Fabrizio (Pons Fabricius)

Veduta del Ponte Fabrizio oggi detto quattro Capi. Vol. IV, Plate XVI from the series Le Antichità Romane. Piranesi’s best view of the exquisite Pons Fabricius, built in 62 BC (during the Late Republic, in the year following Cicero’s consulship!), connecting the Campus Martius to Tiber Island. A particularly dramatic view, with the serene arches of the bridge soaring high above the squalid conditions of the Tiber itself.

Piranesi was born in Venice to a family of stonemasons, architects, and engineers, and his early apprenticeships in these fields laid the foundation for his later artistic work. It was in Rome, surrounded by the remnants of the Classical past, that Piranesi found his métier, and in a series of some one thousand etchings over the course of 30+ years Piranesi became synonymous with the romanticisation of ruins and the rediscovery of the material remains of antiquity that helped fuel the Grand Tour in the second half of the 18th century. Piranesi was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Antiquaries in London in 1757.